


L'Un Vers L'Autre

by Mephistophelia



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Enjolras, Canon Era, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Get R some self-confidence 18K32, Happiness? from me? the mind boggles, Happy Ending, M/M, Opera Lover Enjolras which I swear on my life is canon, Pining Grantaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 02:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mephistophelia/pseuds/Mephistophelia
Summary: When Grantaire asked Enjolras to pose as his lover in order to avoid an arranged marriage, he expected Enjolras to laugh. Recoil in horror. Dismiss it as a joke.What he did not expect was for Enjolras to say yes.





	L'Un Vers L'Autre

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, it's your girl, back with some E/R fluff and too many references to Mozart. 
> 
> This unexpected fic brought to you by the six (6) four-hour flights I've had to take in the past week (and also by To All The Boys I've Loved Before, which reminded me how much I like me a good fake-relationship plot).

Enjolras had never before looked so holy or so terrible. He sat alone at the corner table, wreathed in shadows, either unaware of or unconcerned by Grantaire’s presence at the door.

Grantaire ought to have left ten minutes ago, and he knew it. The meeting was over, and he had other ways of spending his time besides watching Enjolras organize his notes. But as always, lamplight and shadow suited their leader. It added an unnecessary layer of gilt to his already radiant face, one Grantaire couldn’t turn away from. Grantaire leaned against the doorframe, drumming his right fingers against his left elbow.

He had to make a decision. Yes or no. Ask, or don’t.

“If you’re going to say something, say it,” Louison whispered from behind him.

Grantaire jumped, nearly cracking his head against the doorframe. “Christ on the cross, warn a fellow when you’re coming.”

Louison smiled, evidently enjoying the sight of a flustered Grantaire. “He usually works half an hour after the rest clear out,” she said. “You want to catch him before he goes, and not the other way round.”

Grantaire’s brows pulled into a sharp V. “Who says it’s him I’m waiting for?” he said.

Louison’s smile broadened. She swatted Grantaire with the dishcloth in her left hand, then raised her eyebrows and retreated to the front room, back to work.

Grantaire sighed. Subtlety was not, evidently, his forte. A fact made the more salient by the way Enjolras set aside his notes and looked up. He regarded Grantaire coolly, without suspicion or welcome, without anything at all.

“Question?” Enjolras said.

Grantaire coughed. It seemed easier to look at his shoes than at this forbidding young man seated at the opposite side of the room, and so he did that, as if hoping his next lines would appear written on the leather.

“Can I come in?” Grantaire asked.

Enjolras didn’t smile, not exactly, but something curious happened at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t own the Musain,” he said. “Come in if you like.”

Grantaire colored, then took the empty chair opposite Enjolras. He folded his hands in front of him, cracking each knuckle individually in turn. He was never like this around anyone else. Never embarrassed, never shy, not like this. Joly had once joked that perhaps Grantaire had been born with two faulty connections in his brain: the one for sobriety and the one for shame. But here he was, sober as the day was long, and mortified.

Don’t be a coward, he told himself severely. Ask him. The worst he can do is say no.

That wasn’t the worst, of course. There were worse things Enjolras could do than refuse. He could laugh. He could call the gendarmerie. Or, worst of all, he could look down at Grantaire with that ice-cold look in his eyes, that look of complete disgust and disappointment, and Grantaire would spend the rest of his life looking for a hole to die in.

Enjolras leaned forward expectantly. The lamplight caught the left side of his face, casting the right in shadow. It was that, more than anything, the beauty of it, that gave Grantaire the strength—or the stupidity—to blurt out the question, too loudly and too abrupt.

“I wanted to ask if you'd pretend to be my lover.”

Enjolras blinked. This seemed to be all the emotion he could muster at this point. “I…I’m sorry, your what?” His voice sounded as jerky and painted as a toy soldier.

“Lover,” Grantaire repeated—in for an inch, he supposed, in for the whole damnation. “Don't flatter yourself, it's only for an evening.”

Enjolras stood up. He had not blushed, of course. That was impossible. The color in his cheekbones was only from the lamplight hitting him differently, reflecting more of the red from his waistcoat. He paced to the window and sat on the ledge, resting the back of his head against the glass. It was winter, though the black that showed through the window could have been from any season. Perhaps he needed the chill, Grantaire thought, to ground him in reality. Maybe he thought only a dream-Grantaire would be stupid enough to make such a proposition. Grantaire remained seated, having little confidence in the stability of his legs.

“I don’t see how that would be useful,” Enjolras said. His voice had not yet lost its stiffness.

“That's because you have no imagination for anything that isn't revolution,” Grantaire said. Thank God, the usual tenor of his own voice was beginning to come back. “You remember Marie Saint-Yves?”

“I…” Enjolras began, bewildered.

“Blonde hair, from the south? Friend of my mother’s?" Grantaire rolled his eyes, when no flash of recognition crossed Enjolras' face. "For Christ’s sake, she followed me around for two weeks when she was up from the country, if I remember rightly she _stayed at your flat—”_

“The one who confused Rousseau and Robespierre,” Enjolras said, snapping his fingers.

Grantaire made a show of closing his eyes in a silent prayer for patience. “Yes, that one.”

“What does she have to do with—”

“My mother wants me to marry her,” Grantaire said flatly. “I’ve received a letter from her three days ago.”

The look on Enjolras' face hardened, from shock to disapproval. Small wonder, that. He could hardly be expected to rejoice that Grantaire would be marrying someone like Marie. The way his lips narrowed was from that, a generic and disinterested dislike. Nothing more.

“It’s a good match,” Enjolras said tonelessly. “From your mother's perspective.”

Grantaire snorted. “Her father owns a lavender plantation not far from Avignon. As soon as her _cher papa_ shuffles off his mortal coil, the whole lot will fall to me. I’ll be trapped in a bourgeois plantation farming weeds for the _parfumiers_ , married to an empty-headed country girl, and where will our revolution end then?”

Grantaire had not, of course, voiced his primary objection to his mother’s match.

The fact that he could never love Marie Saint-Yves, no matter if she were the most beautiful, most charming, most brilliant woman in all of France.

The fact that he was already in love with someone else, someone who had nothing at all in common with Marie Saint-Yves except for a southern upbringing and stunning golden hair.

That, he reasoned, was not worth mentioning at present.

Enjolras might have made at least fourteen separate objections to Grantaire’s proposition at this stage. Grantaire had already thought of all of them, a hundred times over, in the minutes he wasted trying to muster his nerve. That there were more practical ways to reject your mother’s match than by pretending to be attached to your university acquaintance. That if this was the route Grantaire had decided to pursue, there was no earthly reason why Grantaire should select Enjolras for his scheme. That surely pretending to fancy men would create far more problems than refusing his mother’s match on any other grounds. (Because it would be pretending, through Enjolras' eyes, the whole thing would look like pretending, nothing more.)

But Enjolras, to Grantaire’s astonishment, said none of this.

What he said instead was, “Lavender isn’t a weed.”

Grantaire clenched his fists. “Is that a yes or a no?"

Enjolras smiled. “All right.”

If Grantaire hadn’t already been sitting down, he would have fallen. “I beg your pardon?”

Enjolras shrugged. Over his shoulder, Grantaire could see, a slight curtain of snow had begun to drift toward the ground. “I see what you’re doing,” he said.

Grantaire held his breath and prayed this was not the case.

“Spit in the face of the bourgeoisie. Derail the hereditary transfer of capitalist wealth.”

Grantaire stared. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Precisely.”

“And it isn’t as if I have a romantic reputation to ruin,” Enjolras said drily.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way. It was what he’d asked, exactly that, but Grantaire had never even imagined this as an outcome. He swallowed hard, forced himself to stand. Like a confident human being would stand. One who was only pretending.

“Thank you, Enjolras. You’ve saved my hide.”

Enjolras’ smile seemed almost…almost _shy._ “You can’t very well call me by my surname, can you?” he asked. “Seeing as we’re involved.”

Grantaire turned the approximate shade of Enjolras’ waistcoat. “No,” he said. “Well. I’ll. I’ll think about it.”

“Did you have an occasion in mind?” Enjolras asked.

Christ. He was going to have to say this out loud. “My mother and I have a box at the Opera Garnier tomorrow evening,” Grantaire said, now looking at his shoes again. “I could...I could tell her you'd be joining us. If that would suit you.”

Enjolras took a step forward. He hesitated a moment, then laid a hand on Grantaire’s shoulder. Grantaire felt a thrill beyond the simple contact, like Enjolras had doused him in fire, or replaced his entire arm with stars.

“Perfect,” Enjolras said. “The opera begins at eight. Come by my flat at seven.”

He turned a stunning shade of crimson, turned on his heel, and left the room without waiting for Grantaire to confirm. Grantaire remained staring after him long after he had gone. Wondering, in the name of any god who might choose to listen, what had just happened, and how.

 

* * *

 

Grantaire was early, which was nothing short of a miracle. He was congenitally running thirty minutes late, and yet somehow he had turned up outside Enjolras’ flat at a quarter before seven. He hopped out of the phaeton and knocked on the door to the building, which opened a moment later to reveal an irate landlady. She scowled at Grantaire as if he’d shat on the stoop rather than knocked on the door, then shouted over her shoulder without taking a step nearer.

“Michel! Get your bohemian _flâneur_ off my steps!”

Grantaire did not even have time to flush before Enjolras bounded down the stairs, with a buoyant energy that seemed strangely undignified for him. He looked magnificent. He wore a navy blue jacket that made his eyes look like sapphires, against a pair of ivory trousers that seemed like a challenge from a cruel God.

“Étienne,” Enjolras said brightly. “Shall we?”

Grantaire had never heard Enjolras use his Christian name before. Until this moment, he hadn’t even been sure Enjolras knew it. Evidently Enjolras had decided to get into practice early.

“Let’s,” Grantaire said, with a smile that he hoped looked less strained than it felt.

He opened the door to the phaeton and toyed with offering Enjolras his arm, playing up the nonsense of the whole ordeal. Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was something sacred about this in his mind, no matter how frivolous it was.

“You didn’t have to go this far, surely,” Enjolras said, clambering into the phaeton. “The cost alone…”

“No expense spared, Apollo,” Grantaire said with a smile.

Enjolras stared—Grantaire busied himself with closing the door and rapping on the ceiling, signalling the driver to go. “That’s what you settled on?”

Grantaire blushed. “Come now, Apollo. It could be worse.”

" _How_ could it be worse?"

"I could call you Adonis in front of my mother. Ganymede. Thor, golden-haired and with a hammer the size of—"

"Yes, yes, all right," Enjolras interrupted. "It could be worse."

They rode in strained silence the rest of the way to the opera. The phaeton slipped now and again against the iced-over roads, forcing them to proceed more slowly than usual. Through the lightly frosted windows, Grantaire could make out the shifting shadows of other carriages, other pedestrians, other lives. Lives proceeding on their normal paths, unlike his own, which no longer seemed to make any sense at all.

Enjolras tucked his hands between his knees for warmth and let his gaze wander out the window. Grantaire wondered what he was seeing out there. Wrongs to right, justice to bestow, inequalities to balance. Or a January evening in Paris, with snow along the Pont des Arts, and the warm glow of the gaslamps sending the snowflakes glittering.

When they reached the opera, Enjolras climbed down from the phaeton and tipped the driver—which Grantaire had not asked him to do, would not have asked. As the carriage drove away, they looked at one another, then away, without speaking. Grantaire compulsively cracked his knuckles. They were standing as awkwardly as possible, either much too close or not nearly close enough.

“Holding hands is usually the done thing, isn’t it?” Enjolras asked. It sounded academic, rather like a naturalist exploring a new planet.

“You don’t have to,” Grantaire stammered. He looked down at his own hand with something approaching disgust.

Enjolras shook his head, then reached out and took Grantaire’s hand. “If we’re going to do this, Étienne,” he said severely, “then do it.”

Hand in hand, they climbed the grand staircase, to the private box Grantaire’s mother had reserved for the evening.

It was almost too much for Grantaire’s nerves to bear. Enjolras, bathed in golden light from the chandeliers and the candles. Enjolras, lightly flushed from the cold, snow melting on his slender shoulders. Enjolras, lightly grasping his hand with those strong fingers, the palm cool and dry as bone. Enjolras, pausing before the door of the opera box, giving Grantaire a smile that looked entirely too boyish for the severity of his face.

“Come on, _cheri_ ,” he said, in a voice designed to carry. " _Bon courage._ " And with that, he opened the door and ushered Grantaire into the box.

Grantaire followed, feeling ill.

His mother rose imperiously as they stepped into the box. A tall woman, considerably taller than Grantaire, with her thick black hair coiled back into a complicated twist. She wore mourning still, two years after the death of Grantaire’s father, but that was clearly only for show. One could hardly pretend attending a Mozart opera was an appropriate way to show respect for the dead.

Grantaire saw the judgment flicker across Enjolras’ face, but in a moment it was gone again. Enjolras merely smiled at Grantaire’s mother, bowed politely, kissed the back of her hand as if she were a grand duchess. Enjolras was the warrior, not the artist, but in that moment he was the only one who knew how to act.

“Maman,” Grantaire said. “This is Michel Enjolras. He studies law at the Sorbonne. He’s my, er, my…”

“Étienne’s partner,” Enjolras said smoothly. As if the words cost him nothing. He gave Grantaire’s hand a gentle squeeze, for all the world like one lover trying to reassure the other.

Grantaire’s mother made a face like she’d swallowed rancid wine. “Charming,” she said, then turned to her son. “Étienne, what did I tell you about being scandalous for the sake of being scandalous?”

Something of Enjolras’ confidence must have been transferred through his palm. Grantaire stood up straighter and fixed his mother with a forbidding look.

“You asked to meet the person I loved more than Marie Saint-Yves, maman,” he said. “I’ve arranged for that. I can’t be held responsible if you don’t like the result of your request.”

“I apologize if we offend, madame,” Enjolras said, with a warm smile at Grantaire’s mother. “We needn’t talk of it, if it distresses you.”

She snorted, as if to say she could hardly be expected to ignore the travesty in front of her. “Of what, precisely? That my son is a thrice-damned sodomite picking up rent-boys from the Quartier Latin?"

Enjolras smiled, pretending to miss the insult. "Darling, we've discussed this," he said to Grantaire. "If you're picking up rent-boys, bring them round to our flat, so we can share."

Grantaire laughed, and sat between Enjolras and his mother. Possessed by either boldness or madness, he laid one hand midway up Enjolras’ thigh. Enjolras stiffened, but did not pull away. It seemed incredible, that Grantaire was getting away with this. Surely God ought to have struck Grantaire down with a thunderbolt by now for his audacity. But it was worth it, for the look on his mother's face.

She wanted to scream, to send up the alarm at the boldness of the sin in front of her. But she didn't dare, not unless she wanted all of Paris to know her as the mother of a sodomite. And so she was stuck—as Grantaire had known she would be—with silence, and glaring daggers, and nothing else in her arsenal.

“We’re at the opera, maman,” Grantaire said. “Be pleasant. Michel is terribly fond of Mozart.”

A pink tinge crept into Enjolras’ cheeks. Grantaire had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from smiling. No doubt Enjolras thought his love for opera was a secret, but Grantaire had overheard him speaking to Jehan one evening, about a recent production of _Cosí fan Tutte._ Eavesdropping was impolite, true, but Grantaire couldn’t pull himself away from the conversation, from the animation in Enjolras’ voice. Grantaire had always thought Enjolras’ passion was restricted only for the glory of revolution, but it had crept into his reminiscences of the opera, coloring the misadventures of Italian noblewomen with light and life.

Grantaire’s mother narrowed her eyes. “A Mozart aficionado,” she said.

Enjolras smiled. Any man, any woman, any god could not help but be charmed by that smile. “Very much so,” he said. “Though I confess to being rather austere in my taste in literature…”

“Puritan,” Grantaire interjected. “Michel is positively Benedictine in the library. Though not in other rooms of the house, I assure you.”

Enjolras scowled and shoved Grantaire in the shoulder. Whether it was real or feigned annoyance was impossible to tell, but Grantaire was teasing Enjolras and getting away with it, and the beauty of that could not be undersold.

“In any case,” Enjolras said, “the one frivolity I allow myself is the opera. A small enough vice, surely.”

From her expression, Grantaire's mother clearly believed that if there was a vice in her box, opera was not it. “Surely,” she said.

She looked pointedly between the two men. Enjolras grinned and put his hand over Grantaire’s. It felt like heaven. It felt like safety. It felt so impossibly sincere that Grantaire wondered if Enjolras had been hiding a career on the stage all this time.

“So, madame,” Enjolras prompted. “You're an opera lover yourself? Which is your favorite? For myself, I confess a partiality to Beethoven’s _Fidelio_ , but for comedy, nobody can compete with Mozart.”

Grantaire let the conversation wash over him. He was no longer expected to be a part of it. He knew nothing of opera, at least not on the caliber of his mother and Enjolras, who were quickly swept up in a comparison of the two most famous sopranos to grace the Garnier stage so far that season. They needed him to say nothing.

The task was, it seemed, wholly in hand.

 

* * *

 

Grantaire barely listened to a single note of the opera. It was _Le Nozze di Figaro,_ which he had already seen twice, and the baritone playing the count was nothing to write home about. Besides, there was the additional small matter of Enjolras’ hand, which remained on Grantaire’s thigh for the entirety of the first act, and returned there promptly after intermission.

The small matter of Enjolras, who was more interesting to watch than any performance.

The affection Enjolras showed Grantaire was a farce, but his fascination with the opera was genuine. His eyes never left the stage, except when they closed of their own accord, savoring the resonance of a note or an interval. Grantaire watched him move almost imperceptibly with the flow of the music, as if the conductor's baton controlled the flow of blood in his veins. It was like watching a man under a spell. Entranced. Enchanted.

Enchanting.

It was a dream, in every sense. Point of fact, Grantaire was certain he’d had this precise dream before. But soon enough, it was over, and the lights were rising, and Enjolras was bowing again to Grantaire’s mother and promising to enjoy the pleasure of her company again soon.

They parted at the gates, and Grantaire and Enjolras wandered back down the Avenue de l’Opera, toward the Pont des Arts, back toward the Quartier. No longer needing to make a show of it, they'd abandoned the phaeton, but it was a pleasant night for walking. The snow had stopped by now. Above, the sky was the crisp, clear black of midwinter, alive with stars.

Enjolras let his head tilt back toward the sky and gave the longest sigh Grantaire had ever heard. His breath fogged around him, delicate curls of smoke.

“Well,” he said. “That went better than expected.”

Grantaire tried to smile, but a sudden twinge of shyness had left him with a sort of temporary facial paralysis. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know how I’d have gotten her to drop the matter otherwise. She won't speak to me for six months, but I'm willing to pay that price.”

Enjolras shrugged and kept walking. Though he was some inches shorter than Grantaire, he managed to keep a good five feet ahead. Grantaire nearly had to jog to catch up.

“She deserved the shock,” Enjolras said. “Your mother is the very sort of thoughtless aristocrat we fight against.”

“And yours isn’t?” Grantaire snapped.

Not out of any loyalty to his mother, who was indeed a holy terror. But when Enjolras had arrived in Paris three years before, he’d come richly dressed and comfortably fed, all but unaware that suffering existed in the world. Two weeks in the Quartier taught him well, and it could be argued—Combeferre argued it often—that Enjolras’ self-selected Spartan life was more admirable for being chosen at cost. Nonetheless, it was too much to pretend that Enjolras had sprung from the womb fully formed as a Jacobin.

Enjolras turned his forbidding eyes on Grantaire. They flashed under the lamplight, clear blue and unwavering and terrible. Grantaire knew at once that the dream was over.

“Yes,” Enjolras said. “My mother is as despicable as yours. But unlike you, I no longer care what mine thinks of me.”

Grantaire couldn't think of a single rebuke that would have made him feel more like an insect crushed against a pane of glass. He looked down at his shoes, ludicrously shined against the dingy street. He could not for the life of him meet Enjolras’ eyes.

“You needn’t have said yes, you know,” he said, with a different sort of anger than the one he felt. “Apollo the Great and Terrible, you might have said no, if you despise me so much. I expected you to.”

Enjolras stopped walking. Startled, Grantaire slowed his pace as well, and looked up.

Enjolras’ beauty had been radiant in the opera house, under the golden lamps. Here, under the thin, almost-orange gaslamps, he looked like a fallen angel. Shadows lingered beneath his high cheekbones, light glinted in his eyes. The darkness washed out the jewel tones of his jacket, leaving him in shades of charcoal and gold. If Lucifer had looked like this, Grantaire thought, small wonder so many angels had followed him to hell.

“You expected me to say no,” Enjolras repeated.

Grantaire nodded. “I did.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

God. To have to answer that question.

Grantaire sat down on the side of the road, never minding the soot and the grime and snow that would mar the back of his trousers. Enjolras sat beside him, and it seemed so horribly wrong, this god sitting in the gutter beside a monstrosity like Grantaire, quietly waiting for a response.

“I asked because I hoped you’d say yes,” Grantaire said. His voice was so soft that Enjolras had to lean in to hear, a proximity that made it even harder to speak. “Because if I had to pretend, there’s no one I’d rather pretend with than you. If you despise me, and you should, the least you can do is know that.”

Enjolras sat with his hands on his knees. Inscrutable. Immovable. Grantaire chanced a look up, but that marble face showed nothing. If not for the visible clouds of breath drifting from him, he might have been stone indeed. Grantaire cringed, more than half-expecting a blow. But when Enjolras spoke, his tone was soft.

“You wanted to pretend with me. Why?”

Grantaire laughed. He sank forward, took his own head in his hands. “Christ, Apollo, are you trying to torture me? I love you. I’ve loved you since I met you, when you turned up at the Musain and started your unholy revolutionary cabal. I’ve loved you every day you sneer at me and call me a drunk, every day. There you have it. Do what you will with it.”

Grantaire was trembling. He didn’t know when that had begun. It couldn't have been from cold. He didn’t know when he’d decided to speak, or when he’d decided to stop. He had never felt less himself, or like more of himself was vulnerable to attack.

Enjolras stared. In the unreliable gaslight, his expression was shock, but the undercurrent—horror, revulsion, derision—was impossible to discern. Grantaire could bear anything, he thought, except for amusement. As if his pain were a joke.

And there, sure as anything, the quirk of that smile at Enjolras mouth.

“You think it’s funny?” Grantaire snarled.

Enjolras’ smile broadened. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was odd, strained, which was nonsense because Enjolras had never once betrayed strain in his life.

And it was only getting more impossible with every moment, as Enjolras stroked one hand through Grantaire’s hair, stiff and uncomfortable with pomade, and they weren’t pretending now, or at least there wasn’t anyone else to pretend in front of, only the two of them sitting in the gutter on the Rue Saint-Jacques.

Grantaire closed his eyes to savor the impossible moment of Enjolras’ touch, which left him completely unprepared for the kiss.

It was not a good kiss. Enjolras’ lips bumped against his, too hard and then far too hesitant. Neither of them seemed to quite know what to do with their hands. Enjolras, at twenty, kissed like someone who had never done it before.

It was the single most celestial, most wonderful moment of Grantaire’s life.

He pulled back with a gasp and stared blankly at Enjolras, whose face was pink enough that Grantaire could tell through the lamplight.

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras stammered, looking at the gutter. “I shouldn’t have, I didn’t know, forgive me, I should—” He stood quickly, turned to disappear down the street.

Grantaire laughed like a burst of starlight. “For God’s sake, Apollo, come here,” he said, and reached out to take Enjolras' hand. Grantaire guided Enjolras back down to sit beside him, and then he was kissing Enjolras—he, Grantaire, was _kissing Enjolras_ —properly this time, and softly, with the intent to linger.

Enjolras sighed against his lips, and Grantaire would have consigned himself to hell a hundred, a thousand times over, to possess that sigh, that warmth, that breath, another instant.

Enjolras rested his head on Grantaire’s shoulder. It was a joke, it had to be, and yet, somehow, it wasn’t.

“All this time?" Enjolras asked softly.

Grantaire hummed in agreement. "I thought everyone knew."

"It's a perversion," Enjolras said. "I thought you could see it in me, mocked me for it, I thought—"

“There’s nothing perverse about you, Apollo,” Grantaire said. He stroked one hand through that soft, golden hair. One hand that knew exactly how lucky it was. “Every inch of you, every breath. It’s perfect.”

Enjolras smiled. Grantaire couldn’t see it, but he felt the movement against his shoulder. A real smile. Grantaire had caused it. Him.

“I’m…This is very new to me,” Enjolras said, unnecessarily. “I’m not sure what to, whether I…”

“We’ll go as slow as you like,” Grantaire said, and meant it.

Even in his most lurid dreams, he had never truly thought about sleeping with Enjolras. They’d discussed those urges, one evening at the Musain a year ago. Bahorel had bought the group one too many rounds of Chartreuse, which had no doubt lowered several inhibitions. Enjolras, uncharacteristically loquacious, had confessed that he never thought about sex, not actively, not with the same desire Courfeyrac and Bossuet described.

“It strikes me as tolerable,” he’d said, somewhat flushed, “pleasurable, perhaps, but I feel no, I suppose, no yearning. It’s like...it's like wine.”

Courfeyrac had laughed. “Come again?”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Enjolras said, somewhat defensively. “Enjoyable if it happens along. But if I never partook of either, well, it would be no great tragedy.”

Grantaire couldn't understand either side of the analogy, neither the sex nor the wine. But he knew Enjolras in his own bones. To touch him, to make him smile, to be loved by him— _loved, by him_ —was more than he’d thought possible.

Enjolras sighed and nestled down into Grantaire’s shoulder. He looked so much younger then. Enjolras, it seemed, could look eighteen or forty, but never his age.

“I’m a fool,” Enjolras said.

Grantaire laughed. “And what does that make me? God help us both.”

Enjolras smiled and stood up, extending a hand to help Grantaire. “I don’t think it’s wise to tell them all at once,” he said. “But Combeferre, Courfeyrac, they’d understand. I'll tell them tomorrow, if you’re amenable.”

Amenable? Grantaire grinned and brushed a stray curl from Enjolras’ forehead. “Only if you let me tell them how you charmed the aristocracy out of my mother.”

Enjolras scowled—was he pouting?—and Grantaire felt possessed by a mad rush of affection. The confession had changed nothing between them. This handsome revolutionary could admit what he'd just admitted and still resent the insinuation that he could behave properly with the bourgeoisie.

“For God’s sake,” Enjolras muttered.

“I’ll tell them how she asked you about _Die Zauberflöte_ and you could quote the entire libretto by heart,” Grantaire teased.

“Opera is an inherently revolutionary art form,” Enjolras said tightly. “The comedies especially. Using the lower-class figures to undermine the glamour of the rich. It unsettles systems of power, you understand.”

Grantaire threw back his head and laughed. “Yes,” he said, “and the music is good too, hmm?”

Enjolras’ indignant expression broke into a warm smile. Self-deprecation. A skill Grantaire hadn’t known Enjolras possessed. “Yes,” he said. “And the music is good too.”

“Would you like to come to my flat tonight?” Grantaire asked. He winced, embarrassed by his own boldness—three minutes ago, hadn’t he wanted to melt into the street to avoid Enjolras’ gaze? “Not to, you understand, just, if, I thought…”

“R,” Enjolras said. He grinned, laid one arm on Grantaire’s shoulder. “It’s all right. I know what you mean.”

Grantaire blushed worse than ever.

“But I have work to do,” Enjolras said. “The protest on Wednesday. The speech.”

“Have you started it?” Grantaire asked.

“Yes,” Enjolras snapped. Then, “No. But I have ideas.”

Grantaire laughed again. Some things would never change. Most things, it seemed. Enjolras would always be this way. If he weren’t, Grantaire wouldn’t have loved him nearly so well.

“Of course you have ideas,” Grantaire said. “May I walk you home, then, at least?”

Enjolras smiled, permitted Grantaire to take his hand. “I’d like that.”

They walked in silence toward Enjolras’ flat on the Rue Danton. Hand in hand, neither speaking, neither feeling the need to. Feeling enough in the warmth of each other's touch against the cold. Seeing their breath above, unable to tell where one cloud ended, became another.

At the doorstep of Enjolras’ building, Grantaire lingered, holding both Enjolras’ hands in his.

“What a pair of idiots we make,” he said softly, and pulled Enjolras close, and kissed him until the world seemed to swim.

They broke apart, and Enjolras smiled. Opened his mouth as if to speak. Closed it again, then turned and disappeared into the foyer of the building, moving quietly so as not to wake the landlady.

Grantaire stood there a moment, shaking his head in stunned silence. He had struck the warrior god speechless.

Him.

Grantaire.

When he stepped into his own flat, fifteen minutes later, he locked the door behind him. Alone in the dark, he lay flat on his back on the floor. A moment of silence, punctuated only by his own heart, beating loud.

Then he began to laugh.

He laughed until his shoulders shook, until he was almost weeping and could not explain why.

When he finally slept that night, he heard the sweetness of Mozart’s violins, and the sound of Enjolras’ gentle laugh, the sound of two angels falling, or rising again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for indulging me! Happy endings aren't usually in my wheelhouse, but I had a lot of fun letting good things happen to my boys for a brief moment. 
> 
> If you enjoyed it, comments and kudos are dearly beloved!


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